Bechtel criticized for ‘safety culture’ at Washington state cleanup project

The Department of Energy and Bechtel Corp. were sharply criticized in a watchdog’s report on how safety complaints were handled at the huge Hanford nuclear waste cleanup site in Richland, Wash.

In a message to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board said the sudden firing of a contractor who’d raised safety concerns last summer sent the wrong message to others at the WTP, or waste treatment plant.

“The next day he was abruptly removed from the project. This sent a strong message to other WTP project employees that individuals who question current practices or provide alternative points of view are not considered team players and will be dealt with harshly,” the board report said.

The board also said several witnesses told it that “raising safety issues that can add to project cost or delay schedule will hurt one’s career.”

Secretary Chu should “assert federal control at the highest level” and take necessary steps to improve the safety culture at the site, the board said.

Bechtel, which operates Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in Niskayuna, New York, with the Department of Energy, is building the expensive and complex plant that will burn radioactive waste and make it inert by combining it with glass, isn’t in trouble for ignoring the safety concerns that Tamosaitis and others raised, the board said. It knew of the safety issues. Rather the problem is creating “a chilled atmosphere adverse to safety.”

The work at Hanford is incredibly difficult and technically challenging. Indeed, some of the problems Bechtel and other contractors have had to solve are unique, and new techniques have had to be developed.

The site is where the United States made plutonium for atom bombs during the Cold War. Radioactive waste was stored in underground tanks, and over time records of what, exactly, was in each of the 177 tanks were lost or found to be inadequate.